Reactions: Letters to the Editor

March 2, 2015

Positive Tendencies

To the Editor:

Re “Why We All Sound Like Pollyannas” (Findings, Feb. 24): Researchers say that we recall past events, even negative ones, in rosy hues. Perhaps it is the inclination of memory to protect, to choose carefully the images it will leave prominent in our recollections. When my mother was dying and so physically diminished from her healthy self, I was worried that those days would be my most powerful memories of her, but I find that I have to be deliberate about remembering that time. The picture that surfaces naturally in my mind, often out of the blue, is a happy one — my mother at the dinner table helpless with laughter over a funny story, hooting as only she could and mopping her eyes.

Margaret McGirr Greenwich, Conn.

Sex in the Later Years

Sex can improve with age so long as you are both in good health and your libidos are not clobbered by medications. A lot of people married 50 years are retired, which means they can get enough sleep and have sex at a time of day when one’s nervous system is at its peak. These factors alone can make you feel 10 years younger.

This analysis is probably not taking into account survival bias. After 50 years, those couples having unfulfilling sex were probably more likely to have divorced or even had one partner pass away (sex is a good form of interval training). At 50 years, the population of still-married people are those who already had good sex lives.

No matter how much in love you are at 20, there’s a whole new definition of love that awaits you at 65, and if you knew what it was when you were 20, you’d spend your life being impatient. However physically you celebrate that love and lifelong partnership, it’s always going to be more meaningful to you than you ever imagined.

I don’t care how rigorous this analysis was or what the precise odds are of any particular frequency of anything. For some people, at least, advanced age offers exquisite delights that more than compensate for time’s superficial thievery.

The Quantum Revolution

To the Editor:

Re “Disorder Rules the Universe” (Books, Feb. 17): I object to the title of the review of “The Quantum Moment.” Yes, the quantum revolution has indeed changed the way we need to view many aspects of our world, but instead of wild, negative disorder, quantum understanding, which is more probability than disorder, has freed us from rigid (but beautiful) Newtonian determinism and opened our eyes and expectations to possibilities for the emergence of newness.

Elizabeth Bjorkman, Lexington, Mass.

Looking Back for a Cause

To the Editor:

Re “A Cancer Cluster Is Tough to Prove” (Raw Data, Feb. 17): The statement that “our laws trump science” because it may take decades for mutations to manifest as cancer clusters ignores other social dimensions to having a 10-year statute of repose on legal claims for chemical exposures. The legal system has the old and common-sense notion of “proximate cause.” That is, can the average person understand a direct link between the exposure and the harm suffered?

But it’s also time, as well as mechanism. If cancer shows up 30 years later, is the link strong enough to put the burden of liability on one potential source versus other possible intervening factors? In other words, if I lived for another 30 years, was the harm that serious? The rules of the law are there to make these divisions of liability and responsibility manageable in a way understandable to the mass of society.

Kent Schielke, Naperville, Ill.

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